Do you remember the two proto cartridges from a while ago? Well, here's some new information!

The NA proto version turned out to be the same as the final game. However the Japanese proto has many differences!

The Japanese proto was damaged during an attempted rom dump, but now it has a new owner, trevormacro, and he has a dump that's playable thanks to some help!

This is a screenshot of a note that shows up after the ending. It appears to be some kind of message by Masahide Miyata, who is the director and scenario composer of this game.

I don't really understand what he says besides something like "this is all", but it shows that this proto is from at least the 18th of July, 1994.

Since the game is a proto, that means the game is still unfinished. All the boss battles after the Ruby Cave are just placeholder battles with Goblins. The IP bar doesn't work yet and many treasure chests have different items inside.

This picture shows that they haven't put the Phantom Tree sprite in the game yet =P

Apparently the Sinistrals don't have proper sprites yet, instead we have Iris (she has blue hair in the proto) with different clothes, Jyad, Rochy and Lemmy =P

This animation shows the difference between Iris' proto and final sprite.

This town didn't make it into the final version. The town doesn't have an overworld sprite so it might already be in the progress of being erased of the game.

The proto has many different puzzles and areas and it also uses different tilesets. For all of the comparison images, check this link. For actual gameplay videos, check out trevormacro's youtube channel .

Many monsters have different sprites in battle.

Speaking of battles, there are victory dances at the end of the fight. Trevormacro hasn't have Lexis or Artea in his team yet.

Next is the music of the proto.

Almost all of the music tracks have some kind of difference in the use of instruments or in the background melodies.

Therefore I'll just show a few that have bigger differences.

This is Rumbling, the opening theme.

To the Future sounds different, starting from 3:12.

This is the love theme. This track might be an earlier WIP of the ending theme.

Door to the Journey has an intro in the proto. The Excerion also has an intro in the proto (you can also hear it on the OST or in Lufia Curse of the Sinistrals.)

Then there are also three tracks that did not make it into the final game at all!

This is Grief, it didn't make into the game but it does appear on the soundtrack CD, so you might already have heard this one. This version of Grief is actually used ingame in Lufia Curse of the Sinistrals, along with the Lufia I version.

This is Field Motif, a sad version of the world map theme.

And this is "Song 0C". Unlike the other two unused songs, this one isn't an arrangement of an existing song.

Therefore I just named it "Song 0C" since 0C just happened to be the value of the song.